Related papers: Threat Characterization: Trajectory Dynamics
NEOs come close to the Earth's orbit so that any dust ejected from them, might be seen as a meteor shower. Orbits evolve rapidly, so that a similarity of orbits at one given time is not suffcient to prove a relationship, orbital evolution…
Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and dead comets comprise the vast majority of the population of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) detected to date. Less is known of their physical properties than of the much larger population of main-belt asteroids.…
The aim is to show that in case of low probability of asteroid collision with Earth, the appropriate selection and weighing of the data are crucial for the impact investigation, and to analyze the impact possibilities using extensive…
We assess the risk of an Earth impact for asteroid (99942) Apophis by means of a statistical analysis accounting for the uncertainty of both the orbital solution and the Yarkovsky effect. We select those observations with either rigorous…
Orbital debris is a pressing problem which presents a danger to global space operations and a barrier to continued development of the space economy and space infrastructure. As research continues regarding orbital debris, there is a need…
The concept of sphere of influence of a planet is useful in both the context of impact monitoring of asteroids with the Earth and of the design of interplanetary trajectories for spacecrafts. After reviewing the classical results, we…
Tropical cyclones cause significant inland hazards, including wind damage and freshwater flooding, that depend strongly on how storm intensity evolves at and after landfall. Existing theoretical predictions for the time-dependent and…
The field of asteroid thermophysical modeling has experienced an extraordinary growth in the last ten years, as new thermal infrared data became available for hundreds of thousands of asteroids. The infrared emission of asteroids depends on…
Thermal inertia determines the temperature distribution over the surface of an asteroid and therefore governs the magnitude the Yarkovsky effect. The latter causes gradual drifting of the orbits of km-sized asteroids and plays an important…
The dynamical ellipticity of a planet expresses the departure of its mass distribution from spherical symmetry. It enters as a parameter in the description of a planet's precession and nutation, as well as other rotational normal modes. In…
This article addresses the challenge of vision-based proximity navigation in asteroid exploration missions and on-orbit servicing. Traditional feature extraction methods struggle with the significant appearance variations of asteroids due…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of asteroids and comets, which starts with their removal from the…
Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…
Asteroids near the Sun can attain equilibrium temperatures sufficient to induce surface modification from thermal fracture, desiccation and decomposition of hydrated silicates. We present optical observations of nine asteroids with…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…
We propose two algorithms to provide a full preliminary orbit of an Earth-orbiting object with a number of observations lower than the classical methods, such as those by Laplace and Gauss. The first one is the Virtual debris algorithm,…
Short-arc orbit determination is crucial when an asteroid is first discovered. In these cases usually the observations are so few that the differential correction procedure may not converge. We have developed an initial orbit computation…
Following the discovery that asteroid (3753) Cruithne was a coorbital companion of the Earth, a new theory of coorbital motion has been developed whereby planets or satellites can maintain companion objects in the same orbit as themselves.…
There are several differences between the planetary entry of space vehicles and that of asteroids. In this work we do investigate the applicability of classical methods and approaches developed for debris analysis to asteroid entry. In…
Context. The study of planet-crossing asteroids is of both practical and fundamental importance. As they are closer than asteroids in the Main Belt, we have access to a smaller size range, and this population frequently impacts planetary…